


What Happened After Moscow?

by poenova



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Dorks in Love, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Found Family, Immortality, M/M, Multi, Rescue Missions, be gay do crimes, immortal gays
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25532509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poenova/pseuds/poenova
Summary: After the events of The Old Guard, the group, without Booker, is hired by Copley to complete a covert rescue mission. This mission brings up hidden feelings and hidden truths that threaten to tear them apart.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Quynh | Noriko, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman/Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Nile Freeman/Nicky | Nicolo di Genova
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. A Barn Outside Moscow.

"Joe. Nicky. Wake up!"   
Andy's voice rings out. To a regular Joe or Jane, her words would have had little effect, perhaps a cause to turn in the sheets, or to bury your head a little further into your pillow, as if it were your mum trying to get you up for school. However, this was no normal wake up call. You couldn't ignore this one. This one meant something was wrong.  
The subtle shakes in her words and the slight voice cracks would only be detected by someone who really knew Andy. A decade might raise a hair on the back of your head. A century might raise an eyelid halfway open. After a millennium, you are already up and reaching for your gun.   
"Andy? What is it?" Nicky, already alert, asks.  
Andy is throwing piles of clothes into the air, ram sacking draws and tearing through notebook pages.   
"Andy?" Joe reiterates his partner's question, concern growing in his voice.  
Nicky is up and out of bed, he places a comforting hand on Andy's shoulder. Andy slows down. She bends into Nicky's touch.   
"It's Niles. She's gone." Andy finally reveals.

**2 months ago. Just outside Moscow.**

"This is definitely one of the finer establishments you've brought us to boss." Nicky's sarcastic tone does not fail to make a smile crack on Andy's face.   
In front of the group, a rundown old barn is towering over them, ceiling half caved in at the back, rats running in and out of the various holes in the walls. From a tactical point of view, it was perfect. From a sleeping point of view, this was just about as horrid as the group could imagine. Andy's travel booklet of isolated and abandoned old buildings must be 10,000 pages thick by now.   
"Do you think there's room service?" Joe added. Nicky giggling under his breath, stands behind him.  
"We've slept in worse" Andy remarked.  
"I'll remember you said that in the morning" Nile laughed.   
Joe and Nicky give each other a proud look. 

The outside left little to the imagination on how the interior would be and the group was unpleasantly surprised when they got inside. The doors, barely hanging on their hinges, made ungodly creaking noises throughout their first night there. Even when the wind was mild outside, the doors would act as though a hurricane was passing through. It wasn't the buildings anonymity that made it a perfect hide out, it was the fact that no bad guys could even conceive the notion that anyone would willingly sleep there as to mark it a potential risk. Andy had hit it out of the park with this one.   
Lighting a fire was too risky, the smell and light could inform locals someone was occupying the barn, so sleeping bags had to do. The cold was unbearable. Joe and Nicky were huddling together in their usual sleeping position. Joe's arms wrapped so tightly around Nicky, at one point Andy was concerned he was smothering him. Andy didn't sleep, it felt like she never slept. As Andy's eyes wandered over her friends, she met with Niles'. She was awake, the sleeping bag still up to her neck as to avoid the chill.   
"You ok Kid?" Andy asked her. "I'm usually the only one awake at this point"  
Nile checked to her right to make sure Nicky and Joe were firmly asleep before she sat up.   
"Yeah, I'm alright." She took a breath.   
"I don't know how they do it" she whispered.   
Andy looked over too. There was a fondness in her eyes and she cracked a smile. She was sharpening a knife, the metal grazing her palm. Reflections from the moon bouncing of it's shiny surface onto her face.  
"Sleep in a place like this?"  
"No, stay together after all these years" Nile replied.  
Andy chuckled.   
"Me too Kid"   
Nile brought her knees up to her chest.   
"How about you?" She hesitantly questioned.  
"How about I what?" Andy replied, never once looking up from her knife.  
"Have you had anyone special?"   
There was a pause. Andy still didn't look up. Her shoulders slumped slightly.   
"Once"  
"What happened?"  
"It ended"   
Andy froze up.   
"Get some sleep Kid" 

The next morning Andy was gone. Nile awoke to the smell of fresh pastries. Joe and Nicky were awake, they were sitting at a table. They had managed to fashion something resembling a kitchen out of the ancient pieces of furniture that were strewn around the barn.   
"Where is she?" Nile asked, rubbing her eyes and sitting up in her makeshift bed.   
"She's always out this early on a mission, casing routes and checking activity most likely" Nicky replied.  
"She is a professional. We... are hungry" Joe joked, taking a massive bite out of his pain au chocolate.  
"Where did you get these?"   
"I make it a rule never to sleep anywhere that does not have a bakery within 2 miles"   
Joe nodded in agreement.   
At that point, the door to the barn opened. Andy, in full gear, stepped inside.   
"Morning boss" Nicky shouted over to her.   
"There's around 4 armed soldiers outside" Andy said, ignoring Nicky's pleasantries.  
"Should be easy" Joe replied.  
"Why only 4?" asked Nile.  
The group looked to her.  
"Well, it's just that Copley said she was important. Important people never have only 4 guards"  
"She's right" Nicky smiled and winked at Nile. "Maybe we've been set up again?"  
"Let's not jump to conclusions"   
"Come on Andy, it's not like it hasn't happened before" Joe added.  
"I'm just saying, we've got to be prepared for anything, and an ambush is more than likely if we go off the information Copley gave us" Nile continued.


	2. A New Mission.

**2 weeks earlier. London.**

Copley slides a brown folder over to Andy who is sitting with her feet up on the long glass table separating them. Joe, Nile and Nicky are stood behind her. They watch as she opens the file to reveal a picture of a young woman. The photo has been taken with a long lens camera, the type covert agents use. The woman in the picture is leaving a black car with an older man pressed up against her. Andy doesn't even need to hear Copley say it. She knows exactly who this is.   
"Amira" She says under her breath.  
"Amira Ashman" Copley reiterates.  
"I don't use the term genius lightly but this woman here is exactly that. She's a genetic scientist, usually working out of the renowned Tesnic lab in Edinburgh. Here she is last week in Moscow."  
"Who is the man behind her?" Nicky asked, as Andy passed him the photo.  
"Grigor Dorosh, ex-army. But it is the man in the car, the man you can't see that is the danger here. That man is Ivan Volkov. Leader of the Volkov crime family in Moscow who has either, in the recent weeks become an avid fan of genetic science or, more likely, has been paid to kidnap Ashman, along with her work, for someone."   
"Who?" Andy asked.  
"We don't know yet. The only thing we do know is that Ashman has been working on something for them. Look at the next photo, this is our last photo of her for the past week. She is seen leaving and entering this residential building in the outskirts of Moscow. There are 24 hour, round-the-clock guards stationed outside, so I doubt it's just someone's holiday pad."  
"So, let's get this straight, we don't know how many evil Russian soldiers we're up against. We don't know what kind of weaponry and we don't even know if she's still alive." Joe mocked.  
"Sounds about right." Nicky hissed.  
"Listen, you told me to give you those kind of missions, the important kind, the ones that are able to change mankind as we know it. This is one of those missions. Amira's genius in the wrong hands will be nothing other than catastrophic."  
"Listen guys, yes, we may be in the dark about a lot of things but I can't sit here and ignore it on the basis of blindness... And I know you can't either."  
Nile had only been with the group for under a year and she was already becoming the moral anchor of them all. Her young age and naivety weren't setbacks more than they were enlightening; everyday she reminded the group what it was like to not be hardened by years and years of torment.   
Andy got up out of her seat.  
"Let's get to work!"

 **2 weeks later. Outside Ashman's potential place of capture.**

_30 minutes until breach._

The group is hunkered down in an alley just opposite the building. It is a quiet residential street, only a few cars passing by. It is nearing nightfall so traffic has been winding down since the busy home rush. Nicky, leaning on one knee in a prayer position, clasps a cross necklace between his thumb and forefinger. The faint clicking sound of Nile's I-pod as she searches for a track to ready herself can be heard. Andy kneels with a strange sense of calm, her face giving away nothing. Nile passes an earbud to Joe who is sitting up against the brick wall to her right. He takes it with a small smile. The music would definitely not be his choice but he appreciates the sentiment all the same. 

_5 minutes until breach._

Hands are tightening against the weapons within them. Nicky wraps his hand around the handle of his sword, tapping its ancient leather with such fond familiarity. Joe checks his watch and adjusts his cap. Although they had been part of thousands upon thousands of fights, the eagerness to get going was still matched with that creeping fear that this may be their last. With all their skill, there was still fear. With all their trust in one-another, there was still fear. Joe and Nicky touched their foreheads together and kissed, as they did before each mission. This wasn't a goodbye. 

_1 minute before breach._

Andy turned and took a look at her team, her friends. She winked.

With the flash of a gun, it began. Andy, Joe and Nicky each stepped out of from the comfort of the street shadows into the view of one of the guards. Nile's gun had just gone off, killing one of them from afar and by the time that guard had dropped, 3 more had too. The rustle of guns being cocked and the footsteps of people inside told them what they feared. This wasn't just 4 guards. This was an army. Andy's foot hit the door, kicking it off its hinges. The wood splintered and cracked and fell to the floor. Soldiers rushed out of every door into the main hallway. It was an ambush. The sound of gunfire was deafening, bullets were flying into walls from every angle.   
A bullet caught Nicky in the neck, he fell to the ground but was only incapacitated for a mere few seconds. He swept his leg, causing the shooter to fall alongside him. At that point he simply un-sheathed his sword and with a swift slice, he nearly decapitated the man. Andy, with a tremendous swing of her axe, took out 2 guards. As they clasped their bleeding bodies, writhing on the floor, Joe finished them with a bullet to each of their heads. He jumped back to avoid a gun muzzle in his face, dropping his gun. Nicky rolled over and grabbed it. A soldier jumped on-top of Nicky and a shot rang out, louder than the rest, at least for Joe. He looked nervously at the floor where two still bodies lay. After a few agonising seconds Nicky pushed the dead corpse off of himself and chucked the gun back up to Joe.   
With all the commotion going on in the hall, Nile had managed to sneak up the stairs. Their plan was working.   
Nile reached the top of the stairs. She narrowly missed a sudden fist from her left. She ducked and shot the legs from under the guard. He screamed in pain and she stepped over him, heading for a locked room at the end of the hall. She took her gun and shot the lock twice. The door flung open. A cacophony of gunfire rang out, hitting Nile in the chest many times. She lay breathless on the floor. Andy, Nicky and Joe retaliated, letting out a barrage of bullets back into the room. They could hear a woman's scream, muffled and pained through the noise. Nile gasped, pushing her chest towards the ceiling as she desperately tried to pull air back into her lungs. Her clothes were stained red and torn to shreds. Andy held out a hand and helped her up. With their guns ready, they all made their way into the room. Dead bodies were covering the floor, piled on-top of one-another. Utter carnage. They heard a small whimpering sound coming from the corner of the room. Behind a screen, Amira Ashman, tied up and gagged. She had a bullet wound to her abdomen. Andy removed the gag from her face. Amira's face immediately fell down but Andy gently cupped her chin and brought her eyes to meet hers. They were full of tears, wearied and tired from days locked in this apartment under the vicious torment of a Russian mobster. However, even through all this, she recognised Andy and there was some hope there; some sense of pleasure, however deep.


End file.
